In the present state of the art, the development of a photonics network is in its infancy. Currently, service requests from peripheral nodes in a network are directed to the service administration of a network service provider. The establishment of service connectivity is therefore not automatic and is labor intensive and time consuming.
As a photonics cross-connect network element is being developed, the various concepts of utilizing such network elements in a photonics network are also being investigated. One approach that is currently being proposed to exploit the high bandwidths in such a network is to use an IP core router in the network such that any edge router can utilize the wavelength connectivity to establish a link between the routers. In effect, this approach is simply to use the network to transport IP traffic to the core router.
A problem with the above-described approach is that the initial connection may require human intervention. Another shortcoming is that other services rely on a core router for support. For example, a virtual private network can be established but is dependent on the core router for service availability and security. Indeed, the deployment of future services is dependent on the existence of a core router.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a technique for providing automatic service connectivity. More particularly, it would be desirable to provide a technique for efficiently providing service connectivity between network elements in an efficient and cost effective manner distributed through a client-server architecture.